Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - The Cool S

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

Alex Schmidt, Katie Goldin, and special guest Sequoia Holmes explore why "the cool S" is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

The Cool S, known for being drawn on stuff, famous for being like also spray painted on stuff or carved. Nobody thinks much about it so let's have some fun. Let's find out why the Cool S is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode of Podcasts All About, by being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm very much not alone. I'm joined by my cohost, Katie Golden.

Katie, hello. Hey. Yes, hello. Hi. And we are keeping it quick because we also have a wonderful guest this week. She is the host and creator of Black People Love Paramore, which recently won a Webby Award

and as a fellow Maximum Fun podcast. So glad to be joined by Sequoia Holmes. Hey, Sequoia. Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited. This is a very exciting topic from listeners, I feel like. We usually have them chosen by listeners. Thank you to Enis Minas Minas-Mosef with support from Elizabeth and others on Discord.

We always start with this question, and Sequoia, you can go first. What is your relationship to or opinion of the cool ass, aka the Stussy? I didn't know that it was called the Stussy, first of all. So when I saw that in the email about the topic, I was like, what is that? And then I saw the cool S and I was like, oh, I know about the cool S. As someone with an S name, the cool S was, you know, it was the first letter of my name. I only did the cool S for the duration of middle school. I don't know why that hit me like a revelation at the end of the usual suspects or something.

Right, of course. So yeah, pretty strong. Me and the cool S are bonded pretty strongly. Yeah. And Katie, how about you? How do you feel about it? I I love it. Uh, I can't draw it I'm bad at doing it. I don't I People have tried to explain it to me multiple ways and i'm not like i'm not a total doofus Like I can do I can do painting and arts and crafts. I'm not terrible at stuff But i'm just, there's something about, all right,

you start with a line, I'm like, uh-huh, uh-huh. And then there's a second line, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, two lines? And then at that point I'm lost, three. And then there's another one, and then I just get completely lost. So it's sort of beyond me. So I kind of see it as perhaps people would look at like the ancient pyramids and be like,

it's beautiful, but how does one make it? Maybe it's aliens. It might be aliens. Because I feel insecure about it. So I feel like if I can't do it, then no one else could. So it's got to be aliens. No, you know what? I'm with you, Katie. Not to derail this conversation in any capacity. I recently found out that other folks do not at all struggle with left and right. And that fully blew my mind because I definitely like,

it's not like I don't know it, but it's certainly every single time you're like, go left. I have to actively think and like, okay, left, got it. You're saying go left. And some folks are like, no, it says automatic is up and down. And I'm like, there is no way. So I get it.

If I can't do it, there's no way that it's not alien. Like it doesn't make sense. You know? I do the old thing where it's like which hand I use to hold the pencil, which is the right hand. And I'm like, I just kind of like flex my hand a little bit where it's like, uh, maybe that's yeah. Yeah, that one. Yeah. That's what I do. Yeah. I'm like, I draw my cool s. I'm like with my right hand, yes. Moon landing's fake, left and right is confusing. These are the facts I'm bringing to the table.

Facts. Right. It's like how evolution is a thing, but also we were all intelligently designed so that our left hand makes a letter L if you hold it out, you know? I mean, have you seen Kirk Cameron and that guy explain how we can hold bananas perfectly? So, hmm?

Yes. Thus, thus, ergo thus, QED, Alex? Yeah. We'll send it to everybody later. It's just a really important work of science where a guy opens a banana and thinks that means a lot of things. Yeah, look how easy it is to use this fruit we've domesticated and selectively bred over hundreds of thousands of years.

And I'm glad you're both like familiar with it before I reached out or said it was the topic. Like it turns out that, you know, I don't have like stats on it or anything, but people on the internet all over the world have either shared pictures or statements saying I know about this. It turns out to say global symbol. So all audiences are probably at least a little familiar with it, which really surprised me. I assumed it was sort of American. Oh, totally. I thought it was American. What

do you mean it's a global symbol? What? How is it a global symbol? Other countries don't even use the alphabet. They use other characters. Yeah. Right. Like are penguins riding this on glaciers, Alex? In Antarctica? Now I want to know if those scientists have done it at Antarctica. But yeah, I guess it's just gotten around. We'll talk about the likeliest origin theory, which is in the United States, but it seems like it's just spread as a cultural meme to pretty much the whole world. It is a pretty cool ass, to be fair. Certainly, yeah.

It's very good, yeah. And I was thinking about it, I've never really drawn it, but I would see it around and think, that's cool. Like even when I was in middle school, I was just like, it's good someone kind of dug that into the fake leather in the school bus seat with a pen. Like that's great. Yeah. It's a good thing that this is here and that I can look

at it. Can we like visual, like in case someone doesn't know what it is, can we sort of describe it using our word painting skills? Now I want to have like background music for word painting. I'm drawing it as we speak as well. So you take one, you take your pencil or pen, okay? You take, you make one vertical stroke. Okay. A few millimeters next to it, you make a second vertical stroke, the exact same length. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The precise, follow me, Katie, come with, follow me, come with me, walk with me, okay?

The exact same length. you make a second line. The same distance from that second line to that first line, you make a third line next to the second one. Also the same length, okay? So now we have three vertical lines, all equidistant and all similar in length, all the same length ideally. You then drop down one paragraph, you know in a paragraph you leave a little space, you drop down one paragraph length.

It is that amount, yeah. You make another line directly under that first one that you drew, and you do the same thing for the next two lines. So you have now six lines, equidistant, stacked on top of each other, three on top of three. Okay? Now this is where it starts to get a little complicated. Katie, are you with me? I think I know what it's like to be a dog and have someone speaking to you. Like where it's like, where the dog is just where you're saying like, now, you know, like

sit right here. And the dog's like, I can tell you're telling me things. I can see that you're instructing me, but it's not like entering into my visualization. Okay, well, here's a visual representation. My blurs on, but you can get little glimpses of it. I got it. We've got some lines going on.

And then you take a diagonal from the first top line to the second bottom line and you do the same from the second top line to the third bottom line. You connect them. Yeah. Whoa. And then you're weaving. You make a horizontal line from the last top line to the second top line. You make another horizontal line from the first bottom line to the second top line, you make another horizontal line from the first bottom line to the second bottom line. And then you connect it all with some diagonals to make a triangle shape at the top and a reverse triangle shape at the bottom. And then you have your S.

Wow. Perfect description. Thank you. I feel very enlightened right now. I'm not gonna be able to do it, but I do feel like I've learned something today, which is that some things are just beyond me and that's okay. No, no, no, that's not supposed to be what you learn.

No, no, you're supposed to be learning the S. Yeah. Yeah. And one kind of debunked theory about where this came from is that it was a little puzzle for kids. Because it's almost more of a puzzle than an art challenge to me. It's not geometry, but it's a like, can you do the steps of the thing? It's sacred geometry. It is not just geometry, you're correct.

Yes, it is sacred geometry. It's like a Vitruvian S or something. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, yeah. It's a a Vitruvian S or something. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, yeah. It's a summoning S. You're actually casting a spell certainly when you type out that, when you write out that S. Yeah.

You have to be careful with the power that you wield. Right. You'll summon Steve. Sequoia, Steve, Samantha, Sabrina. Anyone with an S name will come out of your mirror. If they were born between the years 1980 and 2000, you are absolutely summoning one of us. Yeah. This made me want to Google whether Sabrina Carpenter's in the window.

I won't bother, but yeah. She just made the cutoff. So yes, she could be summoned. And we have stats, numbers, and takeaways about this thing's whole deal. Leading with a quick set of fascinating numbers and stats this week that is in a segment called I can share the odds, I can read statistics. And that name was submitted by Alice R. Thank you Alice for having me. Oh yeah, that was good.

I thought we were getting down to it. I thought you were going to continue. It's a very tight Hercules song in and out. Please make these suggestions silly, whack, and bad as possible. Submit through Discord or just hippot at gmail.com. But there's numbers kind of throughout the show. First number is at least seven. Because in just researching I found at least seven popular names for this symbol. It's kind of called a lot of things. Those options include the cool S, the pointy S, Surfer S, Graffiti S, and then the Stussy or Stussy S.

Those are at least seven things this is called commonly. I do like the Cool S or the Stussy. Those are my favorites, I think. I think I knew it as the Graffiti S or the Skater S. I think those are the ones that really stick out to me. I think I knew it as the graffiti S or the skater S. Okay. I think those are the ones that really stick out to me.

As a kid, I think I heard it being called the Stussy and I've only recently learned what Stussy is, which we'll talk about. It's a clothing and fashion and surfing brands. Oh yeah. Wow. It is a reference to that brand. Okay. I thought I was like, are we talking about the brand?

Okay, got it, got it. Yeah, it turns out they didn't create it, but a lot of people just associate them with it for reasons we'll talk about, which don't line up. Yeah. Hey folks, this is Alex. After we tape the episode, I have a quick correction and also a little bit of a request for your forgiveness

because I messed up a pronunciation and it's only in one specific way. Our general topic is the cool s. People call that the stussy and people call that the stussy. Both pronunciations of stu s s y. In general we're right if we use either pronunciation to talk about what people call this letter But the fashion brand has one specific pronunciation. It's named after a guy named Sean Stussy Later in the episode, I will claim his name is pronounced Sean Stussy and that's simply wrong I also misled both Katie and Sequoia about that So they'll say it that way too because of something I set off, Mike, about the pronunciation. So I apologize for getting that pronunciation wrong in the specific context of the person's name and the fashion brand.

It is pronounced Stussy, and I always double-check the information as I edit the show, so I found this before I released it. Everyone's hearing this correction. But I apologize for getting that specific element wrong. All our other information about the Stussy brand is correct, except for how I will pronounce it. And the rest of the information is right too. But thanks for hanging with me with that. And apologies to the person Sean Stussy. That is why the Stussy fashion brand is correctly pronounced Stussy. And here's the rest of the show. So this gets called a lot of things. I hope people saw the title in their podcast app and got it. But also we very simply explained, I shouldn't say we, Sequoia perfectly explained how to draw it.

So now you know how to draw it. Yeah, pretty much exclusively Sequoia. I'm coloring it in now as we talk, please. It's such a perfect doodling thing. Like there are steps, but it's easy and it's great. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And we covered how to draw it. The other quick number to start out here is 1976.

The year 1976. So I was really close when I said between 1980 and 2000. Okay, nice. Yeah, this... Okay, I'm excited. This isn't the origin number of it, but it's an origin of what to call it, like culturally. Because in a pre-internet sense, it's a meme. It's a unit of culture that we pass around. And in 1976, the biologist Richard

Dawkins coined that word as sort of like a gene in biology. It's a meme in culture. It's like a small unit that adds up to stuff. Right. Oh, okay. Wait, and the term is meme? I mean, no, it's meme. But I like to say mem to fringe it up a little bit. Mem. Okay, got it, got it, got it. Got it, got it.

Okay, but the term meme was coined in... Yeah, 1976. Yeah. Really? Yeah, so before, you know, there might have been government computers linking up, but there wasn't an internet yet. Yeah. Right.

Oh, wow. Yeah, it's a book called The Selfish Gene and he coined it as a word for like certain round shapes you find in pottery or like arches in architecture or a piece of melody in music. Just like kind of simple things that humans pass around culturally. And yeah, like we said, this meme has spread worldwide. Let's get into our first takeaway about what's probably the origin of it. Because takeaway number one, the cool ass was a 1970s graffiti trend in the United States. And we know that thanks to two people, a former British spy and the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Okay. Okay.

So it's a bit of a meme passed on by Basquiat. I'm interested. I'm set. Yeah, this we have solid either photo evidence or art evidence of this being around the US in 1973. So it could be older than that, but it's at least as old as 1973. Okay, cool. The key research source for this takeaway, there's an amazing YouTube documentary about the cool ass. It's by a creator named Lemme Know from Sweden. He put that out in 2019. He also references the work of photographer John Nahr, who compiled a book about street art titled The Faith of Graffiti. And then we're linking The Guardian Abituary of John Gnar and also resources from the Museum

of Modern Art about Jean-Michel Basquiat. We'll later cover less likely theories about where this came from, but the photographer John Gnar took two separate photos in New York City in 1973 of cool asses drawn in spray paint in graffiti. And that is pretty solid evidence that this was a cultural meme at that point and probably before. Hostie Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it kind of makes sense because I guess certain shapes just are fun to make and cool to look at. And then we'll do them. And as soon as one person happens upon a nice new shape, everyone's going to start doing that shape. You know, I mean, not to be crude about it,

but we've been doing like doodles since ancient Greek times of a certain area, which is just fun. It's just good fun. And I understand teachers are mad at you when you try to draw that certain area on your notebook. But honestly, it's got a lot of loops and it's got one big curve, which it's, it's a fun shape. That's the problem. It's a fun shape. So once you happen upon a fun shape, people are going to be doodling it a lot. And so at least the stussy, I mean, I feel like teachers would still kind of get mad at us for making the stussy

But honestly, it could have been a lot worse Definitely we could have been drawn that other thing Definitely and did I'm sure but yeah. Yeah. Yeah If I hope someday they uncover ancient graffiti of the stussy, and then I'll believe in aliens. I promise. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. OK, that's the agreement.

We got it recorded. That no one asked for. Literally no one was asking me to make that pact, but I did. And we're here for it. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And that guy who photographed it, John Nahr, he is one of the two people who like accidentally documented this.

And it's very surprising that it would be him. He's a British person. He was born in London in 1920 and lived to 2017, 97 years old. Oh, yeah. And his parents came to London as refugees, one from the Netherlands, one from Belarus. They're both Jewish. He grows up in London, then gets drafted by the British military in World War II and gets assigned to military intelligence.

It's fuzzy exactly what he did, but he in general helped the Albanian resistance fighters against the Italians and then the Germans. So he was like a World War II British spy. Okay. All right. So that's all cool and stuff, but we got to get to the Stussy. Yes. Yeah.

And then as he does that, he falls in love with Ellen Hart, who is an American working for the equivalent of the CIA. It was a forerunner called the OSS. He marries her, moves to New York City, becomes a US citizen, and then works in admin at hospitals, but is also an avid photographer. And this Jewish-British-American former spy documents the cool ass, along with a bunch of other new graffiti trends.

So does he have like a, he has a whole collection of cool asses? Yeah, he was one of the first people to say like, graffiti has artistic value. It is not just some kind of urban decay or problem or something. And so he's documenting all sorts of graffiti and is not focusing on cool asses, but especially in the winter of 1972 into 1973 catches a

bunch of them in his photos. 72 to 73. Okay. Yeah. It's interesting because it seems like, I mean, I would be like, I guess I'd be suspicious of a former spy taking a bunch of photos. I would be thinking like, what's going on? Why are you photographing me? But I think there's a few ways to look at, say, like graffiti or something where it's

like, oh, I don't understand this and therefore I don't like it and I'm going to criminalize it and get really upset about it. The other thing is like recognizing that, hey, like it's actually really interesting to see people expressing themselves. Understanding that culture doesn't just happen in like boardrooms or something. You know what I mean? Like it's it is nice when people recognize that.

Agree. Yeah. I get and of course it would take a British spy to recognize that and not somebody here in the United States who regularly is taking in these images. Ray like it legitimately might have helped. He's kind of an outsider. And also it's weird he was kind of the first still because you can just look at it around you and start to notice patterns like the cool asses. There's a language to it and stuff. And he also, he like gets to know other people

in the New York art scene. And one of them is the famous novelist Norman Mailer. Then Nair and Mailer collaborate on a book where Mailer writes an essay about graffiti and then they publish all Nahr's photographs of it. And it becomes kind of one of the first documents of graffiti that fine art people pay attention to. Nice, okay.

Yeah. And the cool ass is in there. Yeah, like these are one of the only pictures of graffiti that anybody like published and held on to. And so that's why it ends up being like a record of cool S's by accident. Yeah. Dope. Okay.

Was the cool S sort of like the hook that brought people in? Like all right, now I understand that this is art because like, look at that ass. It's so cool. Oddly, no. It seems like the biggest hook was that NAR just kept meeting and connecting with other artists. Like he did photo portraits of Andy Warhol and a bunch of other famous people. He did photo books about home design principles.

Like he just kept rising in stature and people said, well, if he cares about graffiti, he's probably right. Was the hook. Yeah. Yeah. That's somewhat predictable, I guess, that it's like it takes someone who's like, hey, I know how to like network. Also please consider that maybe like non-insular artists are also capable of interesting art?

Yeah. And one of the first artists people paid attention to who had any connection to graffiti was the young artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who was born in Brooklyn, 1960, to Haitian and Puerto Rican parents. He dropped out of high school to make art, especially in the East Village, and was influenced by graffiti around him. And as soon as 1982, he put the cool S and other common graffiti symbols on canvases.

Oh, nice. Then other fine art people were like, oh, it's on a canvas, now I'm looking, you know? It's art. Right, it is art once it's on a canvas. Like if, you know, that is the rules. So... Them's the rules.

Them's the rules. Once you put it on a canvas, then you've got art. Like you could put sort of like a sandwich on a canvas. You can't eat that sandwich anymore. It's art. Like if you're painting, you gotta be really careful when you're having your lunch. Because like if you accidentally put something on a canvas, it's art now and you can't eat it.

It's above you. Right, exactly. It means something. You've got to give it up to art. Yeah. No, but I... Because like there is this... They also put it literally above me.

I'm really hungry, but I can't reach the food. It's tough. I know, right? They also put it literally above me. I'm really hungry, but I can't read There's like a few because there's like a few versions of the of the cool ass on At least one of these paintings. Yeah, and they're very very like painterly cool asses. And Yeah, I have you like I've seen his I've said I've been to a museum. I'm cultured.

Yes, me too. I go for the sandwiches. I don't really look at any of it. I go for the sandwiches. Primarily, but we can't eat them. That's what's about the sandwiches at the museum. They're on the canvas. I know, they're on the canvas. Storcher, yes.

Above me and I can't reach it. They won't let me. Right, nailed a sandwich to a canvas. But it smells so good. Give me that panini. A lot of these paintings are quite big. So already it has that impressive size of graffiti. Because that's what can be... Obviously you can do... There's small graffiti, but there can be really, really large graffiti that has a lot of different colors A lot of different sort of like strokes and stuff. It can be really

Really impressive. I guess kind of like leave a big impact Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally and yeah and his most of his were also kind of tucked into bigger pieces One key one is a piece called Charles the First, where there's a crossed out cool S next to a more Superman style S, like a different S in a logo shield. Mm-hmm. Wait, now I'm not sure if I know the difference between the Superman style S and the cool S.

Let me look. Oh yeah, this S. Yeah, I did get the Superman S and the cool S mixed up. I definitely, okay, yeah. Yeah, a lot get the Superman S and the cool S mixed up. I definitely, okay, yeah. Yeah, a lot of people do. Numbers are kind of sprinkled through the show. Another number is April 18th, 1938, because that date in 1938 is the introduction of Superman

in action comics number one. And apparently comics fans have gone through all of Superman's run and he never quite has a cool ass logo Like it's just always more of a loopy ass. That's not Touching itself. I guess I would say it's not like a bubble kind of cool ass Superman never touches himself. He's a good boy But never be something so obscene and weird. Yeah, I regretted that phrasing even before I said it and weird. Yeah. I regretted that phrase even before I said it. I was, it's how it goes. But yeah, it's like a stylized Times New Roman S that kind of like touches the borders of the diamond shape that's on his thing. Yes. Yeah. Exactly. On his emblem. On his emblem.

That's the word I was reaching for. Yeah. And like modern old in between, he's just never really been drawn with this. But a lot of people call it a Superman ass just because I think it's the other famous ass in American culture. Exciting and bold and has that energy. Yeah. And with Basquiat recording this, because he made it kind of separate from Superman in one piece. And then his most useful piece for documenting this is a piece called Olive Oil. And there's all sorts of text on it, but in one corner there's a cool S and then he labels

it Classic S of Graff, G-R-A-F-F. So he even in his piece gives you a caption to tell you this is from graffiti, it's where it's from. Oh, I see. Okay, that's what Graff stands for. like gives you a caption to tell you this is from graffiti. It's where it's from. Oh, I see. Okay, that's what Graf stands for. It does feel like that happens pretty frequently where there's something that is, you know,

cultural phenomenon that really only gets credence once like you have like one or two big famous people who are like, no, this is great. And then suddenly it's like, now you're allowed to see it as something other than just like, you know, some like commoner garbage or whatever, you know? A nuisance, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

It's very, I mean, on one hand, it's great that this got kind of elevated by the art scene because it's very cool, but it is also a little discouraging that we must be granted permission before we see value in things. What's that? The one other kind of surprising documentation of a cool ass comes from a movie. pick this up quickly either from New York or on its own and it accidentally pops up in the 1978 horror thriller titled Piranha. Piranha is produced by Roger Corman it was sort of the vibes of Jaws but with piranhas was the idea. Wait was it called Piranha or Piranhas? Like one piranha or multiple piranhas? One piranha yeah. But that's misleading because I thought that the scary part about piranhas is that there's

a lot, like one of them's not going to, what's it going to do, nibble at you, but it's a lot of them that's the problem. So sorry, I'm just being a critic here. It's easy to be a critic. I like that you had immediate and correct biological notes. Like that's true. Yeah, one you could kind of handle. Right.

You just nudge it away. Yeah. Yeah. They did one scene of the movie in an older public building in LA called the Social and Cultural Resource Center. And sometime before filming, somebody just drew a cool ass on the wall and it's in the frame. The filmmakers didn't work around it.

And so that's accidentally another clear documentation of 1978 or earlier, Los Angeles graffiti had cool asses. Just because this movie got made. That's it. Yeah. Dope. Okay. Was it in a bathroom stall because someone was getting eaten by piranhas through the

toilet? I've never seen this movie, so I don't know. Have you guys seen Piranha? No. I have not seen it actually. I just saw the screen cap, so I know it's real. Okay, I've got to look at the screen cap and kind of try to guess what is happening to the lady.

Yeah, there's one upset lady, but she's not mad about the ass. She's talking to somebody Yeah, maybe she's having a heart with the piranha. She is lifting it does appear. I'm sorry. I this is important to me though Lifting the tank lid the tank. Yeah. Mm-hmm. She's looking down at the floor that makes me think there's piranhas in the toilet that are trying to bite her butt. I'll watch the movie later, but I think that's probably what's happening. That's up. So that's our earliest dates for a cool ass. And we have a next takeaway here about another

thing we definitely know because takeaway number two, the Stussy fashion brand has a surprising lack of connection to the cool ass and a separate surprising lack of connection to Frank Sinatra. That second part of what you said hit me like a bus because I really thought that the Stussy brand was connected to Frank Snodger. Wait, really? No, I don't know. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm like, yeah, why is it connected to Frank Snodger?

I'm like, what? What is the connection? You know, the episode's about the cool ass, so I was like, let's find out if it's connected to it. And then there's a whole separate weird thing with Stussy where the co-founders of Stussy are a guy named Sean Stussy and a guy named Frank Sinatra Jr. Oh, wow. That's so random. What a random name. But he's not related to Frank Sinatra Sr.?

Yeah, there's a Frank Sinatra Sr., the celebrity, who had a son he named Frank Sinatra Jr. What? And then this is a whole separate guy named Frank Sinatra Jr. That is so weird. Also, Sinatra is just not a common last name, so... It's really not? Right. They have to be related to...

They're related. They don't know what they're related. That is Frank Sinatra's ancestor, okay? Was this just like a really bad witness protection program where it's like, they just like, we're going to rename you Frank Sinatra Jr. That's already my name. That's exactly it. It's like, no, I don't know.

Right. Right. Or he was a random and witness protection decided to give him that name instead of whatever his original name was. And then he was like, yeah, but that's already a guy and they're well known and that guy's well known. And they're like, yeah, that's the purpose. When people search for you, they'll find him.

Ooh. And you'll be safe. Invisible, yeah. And that original guy who was in witness protection who got renamed Frank Sinatra Jr. Elvis Presley. That, we've done it. Well, now the government's going to be after us. I hope we're okay with that.

We've really cracked something here. We got too close to the truth. We did. We got real close to the, flying too close to the sun. It's the magic of the cool-ass. You just find truths, you know? Right. It is within me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this, I knew almost nothing about the Stussy brand and I was excited to learn about it.

Key sources are a couple of articles by journalist and podcaster Julian Morgan's writing for Vice News, also Los Angeles Times coverage of the Stussy brand. Sean Stussy was an amateur surfer in Orange County, California. He decided in 1985 with his friend Frank Sinatra Jr. to start a surfing company that quickly got into clothing. And by 1996, they were earning $35 million in annual revenue and were a huge deal. But as Julianne Morgan points out, Sean Stussy was not famous before this and the company started in 1985. So that doesn't fit the timeline of a 1970s graffiti symbol that just is from something separate to this. Right. But did they ever feature the cool-ass in their clothing?

Great question and no. Yeah, they didn't, right? Yeah, their main logo is the way Sean Stussy writes his last name. Writes his name, yeah. And then there's like many other fonts and logos that they've used this word in and none of them really match up. There's a few you can find online where it's kind of a block S, but it's not the same thing. They've just never used this and randomly been associated with it.

That's so odd. I mean, is this like, this feels like the Mandela effect where it's like, we have a collective thing of like, it's Berenstein bears, not Berenstain bears. That's a lie. A lie. Okay. That Fruity Balloon has like a cornucopia. But apparently it doesn't.

Is this like one of those things? Did we shift universes where there was a cool S on the Stussy? Maybe this is a lesser known Mandela effect. It seems to be and it's mostly a coincidence of skater and surfer and graffiti maybe overlap. And then this guy's name has a lot of the letter S in it and people just kind of, like somebody claimed that and it passed around and according to longtime employee Emmy Coates, quote, I personally get asked this a lot but people have been drawing this S long before Stussy was established. It's actually quite amusing that people assumed

it was just Stussy. That sounds like someone trying to cover up a parallel universe shift. Mm-hmm. Blame it on Stussy, one in doubt. One in doubt. Yeah, it's a cool brand though. I do like those bucket hats. Yeah, it also seems like they just kind of took off

as a business, maybe when like more of the mainstream find out about the symbol, you know? It's just kind of coincidences and misinformation are why people think that this brand name with a bunch of letter S's in it is related to a fun diagram geometry puzzle thing. That's it. That's fair. There are three S's. So yeah, one of them would be the cool S naturally just

Yeah, could also be that people would like draw cool S's on Their shirts and stuff because it's like there's already S's here. Why not add some more? It's real it's like very snake thinking right where it's like I got one ass S I could just add a bunch of other S's and just go sss, you know. The thinking of how snakes talk. I see. I got it. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. It's snake logic. Like I start with one S and I keep adding S's until it's just sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss, sss,. And then there's this whole separate, almost parallel universe thing where, again, there's a celebrity named Frank Sinatra. He was born in 1915 and was famous starting in like the 1930s and 40s. In 1944, he had a son named Frank Sinatra Jr.

And then like after that, somebody in Orange County named their child Frank Sinatra, even though that is definitely a famous person's name already. Wait, wait, hold on. Just pause a second. Was the parents last named Sinatra or did they name their child Frank Sinatra? Like would it be as if I had a child and then I named them Frank Sinatra Golden, or did they already have the last name Sinatra and then they just named their child Frank? Yeah, they're one of the few other Sinatra families.

Yeah, maybe a distant ancestor in the old country, but no real connection. They could have chosen any other first name, man. Right. And then that guy who's half a century into Frank Sinatra being famous sticks to it and says, my son is named Frank Sinatra Jr. And then that kid is randomly the like childhood friend of Sean Stussy and they go into business together. And in 1996, Sean Stussy sold the business to his friend.

He wanted to spend more time surfing and just kind of being young and retired. So starting in 1996, a guy named Frank Sinatra Jr. was the full owner of Stussy. That's just going on. And then the new CEO is his son, David Sinatra. There's a whole second weird name thing going on with the cool ass that's not from the Stussy brand. So he didn't name his son Frank Sinatra Jr. Jr. I really wanted that. Yeah that would be great. How does that work? Like if you're a junior do you always remain a junior like you're 90 years old and you're still

like hi I'm Frank Jr. Yeah. Because my daddy named me that. Is that how that works? I'm FJ. Yeah, I'm FJ or I'm junior. Yeah. OK. Who am I? Who am I to say that?

Frankie J. Frankie J. Yeah, yeah. OK. All right. I mean, you know? Yeah. The author Kurt Vonnegut, he's technically Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and when he was like professionally an old man,

his books still said Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on them. Yeah, it's just how it works. Yeah, yeah. Did he keep a juice box with him? I'm a bad person. Grow up, why do you have Jr. your name? Grow up, you cannot have Jr Junior in your name? Grow up. You cannot have Junior in your name as an adult. What are you, a Benjamin Button?

Button, right. Look at Benjamin Buttons over here. Frank Sinatra Jr. Drop the Junior. What a fun group of people to start a fight with. We're going to see our ratings tank from all the juniors out there, you know on math. Yeah. Yeah tank our podcast ratings Worth it. I I have principles Yeah, I stand behind that one. Sorry to my fiance who was also a junior. Love you though That's the kind of commitment that is important.

Yeah folks, we're gonna take a quick break while Katie personally apologizes to Sequoia's fiancé. And then we'll be back with a few more numbers and a takeaway about the lore around the cool ass. Big E is a former WWE champion. He spent 10 years at the top sharing the ring with John Cena and Roman Reigns. So what's next? When I retire, I'm going to move to the desert. I'm going to delete all my socials. I'm going to disappear. Y'. I'm going to delete all my socials. I'm going to disappear. Y'all will never hear from me again. I'm going to sit on the couch, chill, and live my life.

From the legendary tag team, The New Day. It's Biggie on Tights and Fights. I feel like I need to listen to a few episodes that you guys have because this was really enjoyable. So thank you so much for your time. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Available on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. The following are real reenactments of pretend emergency calls.

911. My husband! It's my husband! Calm down please. What about your husband? He loathes to dishwasher wrong. Please help! Oh my god! Where are you now ma'am? At the kitchen table. I was with my dad. He mispronounces words intentionally. There are plenty of podcasts on the hunt for justice, but only one podcast has the courage to take on the silly crimes. Judge John Hodgman, the only true crime podcast that won't leave you

feeling sad and bad and scared for once. Only on MaximumFun.org. And we're back. And we have more numbers about like other theories about the cool ass. One of them is the number 33 years. Thirty three years is how long a guy named Richard Valdemar was a detective with the LA County Sheriff's Department. And he's basically an expert source on the cool ass not being a symbol of anything specific in graffiti,

such as gangs. There's like a belief that it symbolizes gangs, but- Oh, I see. It's just too general of an artistic element to actually mean any of that. Yeah, what gang? The Stussy Gang? Right?

What gang would that be? This just sounds like an email from your aunt that you get Yeah, what gang? The Stussy gang? What gang would that be? It just sounds like an email from your aunt that you get where it's like, oh, be careful. Don't put fuzzy dice on your rear view window. Otherwise, you're going to get shot. It's like, what? 100%. It definitely sounds like a chainmail email that you got in 2005 that's like, pass this along to five friends or the gang, the cool S gang will come and take your life. Yeah.

Right. And you will see increasing cool S's as they encroach upon your life. Mr. Policeman, I left you all the S's. All the cool S's, Mr. Policeman, I left you all the sssss. All the cool s's, Mr. Policeman. Right, from the movie The Snowman, but the s is a... From the ssssss. Snowman. Cool sssssss.

Snowman, yes. Snowman. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, like apparently the letters s-u-r could represent the Serenios, which is a set of Latino gangs in Southern California. And S-13 can be a symbol, but the number 13 references the 13th letter of the alphabet. The 13th letter is M, which stands for Mexican mafia. Like, there are some more complicated gang signs

involving an S, but it's not it. All right, guys, we're doing too much. All right. No, no, no, we're starting to get real. On slide five of my PowerPoint, just at the police station. MS-13, right. Using WordArt.

Now look at this new possible lingo that they're using out there. That's a cool lingo. Yeah. Yeah, you need Microsoft Office to open all the attachments on this forwarded email. There's a lot of PowerPoints. There's a lot of words. So yeah, it's apparently like bubble letters or arrows are just incredibly basic components of graffiti. It doesn't indicate anything. Yeah.

There's another theory here. The next number is 1958. That is when the Suzuki Motor Company in Japan adopted a large letter S as their logo. Okay. But I think that's different, right? Yeah. Of all the less likely theories, this S kind of looks like it, but it's still a very different shape.

It's kind of got swoops at the ends of the points of it that don't make sense. But some people think it's from Suzuki. Like on the front of a Suzuki car or something, the S from that is what people are thinking of. Yeah. Yeah. This is definitely the closest one. It's angular.

Yeah. It kind of looks like the infinity one. Yeah. Yeah. This is definitely the closest one. It's angular. Yeah. It kind of looks like the infinity one. Yeah. This is the closest one for sure. It's like pointy. It's close. It's close, but it's not, I wouldn't consider this. It's not it.

Yeah, that's not it, but it's close. Yeah. And the timeline works. They did this in 1958. It's before our graffiti evidence, but it's still very differently curled and styled. And also Suzuki's never been like a massive car or motorcycle maker in the US. It's here, but it hasn't been like dominant. And so of all the theories, this isn't totally debunked, but it's not likely.

I just think someone was like doodling, man. That's my theory. That are aliens. It's got to be someone doodling, coming across like, hey, I made a cool S just now. And then everyone going like, whoa, that's a really cool S. And then just people started doing it. Or aliens.

There's literally no other option. No, you're definitely summoning an alien named Sabrina. Right. Sabrina, the alien witch, is coming down. Sabrina Carpenter. Sabrina Carpenter, the alien witch, is definitely coming down every time you do that S and abducting you in your sleep that night. And then wiping your memory, you don't remember, then you keep doing the S, you keep being

abducted in your sleep, and that's it. That's how she stays top of the charts. She keeps wiping our memories, you don't remember, then you keep doing the S, you keep being abducted, and you're sleeping, and that's it. That's how she stays top of the charts. She keeps wiping our memories, and then we keep listening to espresso over and over again. A hundred, she sits you in front of a machine that just plays espresso over and over and over. She misses the Paola accusations for that reason, because she's wiping your memory.

And then, yeah. Those are the two big chart schemes that Taylor Swift puts out special editions and then Sabrina Carpenter is a powerful alien. Yeah. She's right. Well, yeah. And wouldn't you believe it? Doesn't she look like a vampire?

Alien. Completely. Yes. Completely, yes. All the Juno positions are increasingly ominous. Like, I don't know. Oh boy. 100%. Oh my God.

During mine, she simulated performing fellatio and that very much could be representative of being abducted. She had something above her. It was as though she were telling us right then and there. I think we've got it, folks. Breaking this wide open. We do. Yeah.

Pretty much. This oddly leads into the next thing. There's a bunch of theories about like band logos being the origin of the cool S. Not fun singers, but a lot of bands, either the S just doesn't look enough like it or the band's too new. But theories involve the logos of Slipknot. Slipknot, no. And Styx and Slayer and then the end of the logo of Kiss.

Those are four of the big ones. Sunny and Cher? Oh, Sunny could never. But yeah, like Slipknot and Slayer are just both too new. They're from after 1973. And Sticks, it just doesn't look enough like it. And the S's in Kiss don't look enough like it. So. No, yeah, the S's, no no none of those asses are even close. No

Yeah, and then there's one band that does definitely use a cool ass, but it's not that well-known it's a thrash metal band from Tucson, Arizona called Sacred Reich and Good news. They're anti Nazi anti-fascists. The name is like a dig at those people. Okay, we had to clear that up quickly. Yeah. Okay, because I was gonna say, I don't love the name. Yeah, I was a little nervous about that one. Okay. Yeah, we can let the word Reich go, I think. We don't, you know, just... Yeah, the way that that startles me. There's other probably German synonyms, you know? Like, come on, just forget it.

What about sacred bike? Everyone likes bicycles. That's true. But they like definitely use the cool-ass, but they formed in 1985. They are influenced by it, not the other way around. Right. So, bands can rule out. And you're sure they're anti-Nazi.

The name is apparently what right-wing authoritarians want to do in a mocking it way. Okay. They mean well according to what I read. Then a little suggestion, they should put a little picture of Pooh-Poo on top of the band name. Because then we know, right, like, Sacred Ryke, and I don't like that. But then if I see, like, if I see some Pooh-Poo, like, on it, like, a Pooh-Poo on top of the cool-ass that's in that,

and then also on top of the R, and then I'm like, okay, you're making fun of them, because I see you've drawn Doodoo Poopoo on the logo. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right? You guys are, you guys, you guys feel like- Yeah, no, I'm following.

Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Okay, good. They have to do something. Yeah. It's like difficult to parody that stuff if you're not like going that far. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You got to really spell it out. Like, you know, like- Is it worth it? We think this is poopy doo doo feces. Yeah. And then last number here is an interesting date range.

It's 1974 to 1992. And so that's one year after John Nair's photos, 1974 to 1992. That's the publication years of a children's magazine called Dynamite. And it's a children's magazine from Scholastic that was like, this is kids safe entertainment puzzles magazine. Again, really great YouTube documentary by Lamino. He came across a theory that the cool ass was from a puzzle in Dynamite magazine. The timeline doesn't quite fit, but also he went and got a whole bunch of old issues of it from the 1970s and never

found this puzzle. But there's a genre called matchstick puzzles, where you assemble like a limited number of straight lines into a shape. And so this is like the logic of one of those, but it's not from that magazine or that thing. It's indoctrinating our children to work in matchstick factories. All right. Why did Dynamite magazine have so many adults on the cover? Yeah, you know Why is the Fonz on here? I don't know that shows you're watching

Happy days like that unless they were I don't know who am I yeah? Yeah? I guess the Fonz is aspirational to us all. Right, and you know what? And that is a fact. So, yes. Square Pegs, the hottest TV hit of the year. You can float in midair, find out how inside. Puzzles and prizes. What if? Yeah.

What if this theory didn't make sense because they definitely came up with it but nobody likes the magazine. Like, nah, nobody read it. So, couldn't be from there. Nobody read it. I was big into ZOO books, personally. Now we're talking. Did you guys mess around with magazines when you were kids? I did. I was a 17 magazine girly or a J-14 magazine. That one was more of a 2010s, maybe early 2000s. Yeah, this Dynamite magazine is more like a highlights or boys' life for boys, but it's

like that age, not teenagers. Yeah. Got it. It's like that age, not teenagers. Yeah. It's like you're in grade school and all other magazines potentially have something too old for you. So here's this. Right. And your parents were like, you're not going to read comics. And so they gave you Dynamite magazine.

And that was it. Yeah. Alex, what magazine was your sort of reading material of choice as a kid? I submitted a joke to Highlights magazine and they printed it. Oh my goodness. That's cool. And it didn't make any sense. It was like, what did the T-Rex say to the Triceratops? I think it was. And the punchline was, I'm going to eat you. It's not really a joke, but they printed it. was, I'm going to eat you. It's not really a joke, but they printed it. That's just facts, man. Sometimes the real joke is the cruel reality of life on earth. Yeah, the facts. Sounds like a poet to me.

Very nice of you both. Yeah, so that's almost all the theories that don't make so much sense. We'll have our bonus story about one more. And in the meantime, we'll wrap up the main show here with one last take away number three. A random Australian guy trademarks the cool ass. Oh, come on. You can't. He did this in 2020. As of 2020, it's trademarked.

Boo! Boo, put your shrimps on the Barbie. Don't trademark things that are a public good, you dork. Go fight with the kangaroos. Leave us alone. Yeah, go touch one of your deadly tarantulas or something. Your huge spiders. Right. Yeah.

That's not a stussy. This is a stussy. And I have a much bigger stussy. Yeah. Get out. Yeah. Come on. You can't.

Oh, god. There's something about people trying to trademark or copyright things that have just been sort of in the public consciousness for a really long time like Just like you're like like we should all get turns giving you a wedgie, right? Like that's Yeah, that's that should be Kylie Jenner's punishment for trying to trade trademark Kylie Right when Kylie has been a name for forever and Kylie Minogue is also famous. So yeah been a name for forever and Kylie Minogue is also famous. So yeah. Like the view, you know, like when everyone like viewed the Queen and state like for her funeral, it'd be like that. But forgiving Kylie Jenner a wedgie.

Wedgie. Yeah. And like a good one, like putting it over her head. Right. Like a classic cartoon version where you really overestimate the elasticity of underpants? Of undies, yeah. I did not know that Kylie Jenner story and I'm so outraged. Well, yes, as you should be, that's the correct response. Yes. So tell us more about this lovely gentleman who tried to trademark a public good.

And the good news is he's kind of doing it in the positive spirit of keep it for the public. Did I stir up a hate mob against an innocent Australia? Oh, sorry Mr. Aussie, we love you. Wouldn't be the first. Am I? Wouldn't be the first, no. Yeah, sorry.

But he could always do it the wrong way, you know. But yeah, he was able to trademark it because its creator remains a mystery. There's no one inventor, and with trademarks you can just grab something like that. And key sources again, Julian Morgan's writing for Vice News. In the summer of 2020, a guy named Mark May obtained the United States trademark for the cool ass. Junior? Mark May obtained the United States trademark for the cool ass junior, Mark May Junior. I'm trying to figure where we can hate him. This is a real junior move.

Right. It's giving. It's giving, Junior. No offense to your fiance. Sorry, sorry. Weirdly, there's another name overlap thing. He's not super famous, but there's a NFL player and then TV commentator named Mark May. So there's another name overlap here for no reason. Can we just start coming up with better names, people? Come on. But this Mark May is Australian, moved to New York City, and then opened a coffee van,

like a mobile coffee shop. And he said, what can be my branding? And then he just asked himself the question, does anybody own the cool ass? Can I just do that for my independent coffee van? And with IPLOD, in super general terms, it's hard to get a patent. Like a patent, you need to prove you created and invented and designed the thing. A trademark you just need to prove it's like linked to your business and nobody else is using it. When he said, hey, it's 2020, I'm going to try trademarking it, he found out no one had the trademark, but a college student in Boston was in the process

of getting it. So someone else also had this idea. They were like, I think I can just trademark the coolest. Was it Mark Zuckerberg? Was it Mark Zuckerberg? So someone else also had this idea. They were like, I think I can just trademark the cool-ass. Was it Mark Zuckerberg? Was it Mark Zuckerberg? A college student in Boston trying to steal things. We're onto Marky Mark. Not that one, the other one. No, there's too many marks.

Yeah, lots of marks. I mean, there's a movie about it called the social network. So, you know Be so much better if it was just snakes in that movie Yep, yeah, I'm glad for the audio medium. We decided snake sounds are cool. Yeah, just working. It's great. Everybody's on board It's just working. It's great. Everybody's on board. So this college student, apparently they just did that for fun. They had no business plans. And so Mark May contacted them and paid them to just stop trying to get the trademark and let him get it. And then he got it. And so technically, as of the summer of 2020, he can sue anybody for violating the trademark.

But he said, quote, I'm aware of people's knee-jerk reactions, but I wanted to trademark the symbol to preserve it. Because over the past hundred years, the symbol has permeated itself into almost everyone's lives, irrespective of race, religion, upbringing or beliefs, end quote. So is he preventing someone like so he's not going to sue anyone, so he's preventing anyone else from suing anyone? Why is this an act of preservation? Yeah, it's kind of two things of, he wanted to make sure he could print it on coffee stuff and also he wanted to make sure basically a giant or powerful entity couldn't sue people.

Because a good job by journalist Julian Morgan, he asked him like, okay, but what if a company used it, what would you do? And Mark May said that he'd probably sue like a giant corporation. Okay. Well, that makes sense. But small businesses and regular people. Yeah. Okay.

So he's Robin Hood. Yeah. Suing upward. You always sue up. Sue up. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Like if Disney decided to be Disney with the cool ass in the middle. Wow. Disney, Snakes, Robin Hood. It's all coming together. It's all aligned. I love that snake in Robin Hood. I don't care what anyone says

that snake was like, he was just trying to manage government and he was had a tough job. I believe his name is Sir Hiss. I think that was character. Sir Hiss. His name is Sir Hiss and he's always like trying to like be like, listen sire, here's the state of your country and he was never listened to. And I do feel sorry for him. Yeah, that lion prince was never like into it. No, he's a very beleaguered snake. This is my hot take on the Disney movie Robin Hood.

I hope you've enjoyed our podcast, Disney's Robin Hood. A deep dive. But yeah, and if you've drawn a cool ass since the summer of 2020, you technically violated intellectual property law, but the guy seems nice and it's cool. Aw man, Sequoy, you're in trouble. I gotta scrub this real quick, VRV. You've been literally caught on audio. Oh my goodness. Yes. ["The New York Times"]

Folks, that's the main episode for this week. Want to say another huge thank you to Sequoia Holmes for making the time and hanging out and making this episode. Awesome. And she has her own wonderful podcast, as I mentioned at the top. It's called Black People Love Paramore. It is about things like Paramore that are underrepresented, under known about as a huge interest of a niche of the black community or most of the black community in general.

She's done an episode with Hayley Williams from Paramore also and it won a Webby recently. It's a wonderful show. I have enjoyed it so much. It's easy to find and wonderful to listen to. Again, the title is Black People Love Paramore. And beyond that, hey, welcome to the outro of this episode with fun features for you, such as help remembering what was in this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the cool ass was a 1970s U.S. graffiti trend and we know that thanks to former British spy John Gnar and amazing fine artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. and amazing fine artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Takeaway number two, the Stussy Fashion brand has a surprising lack of connection to the cool ass, and the brand also has a surprising lack of connection to Frank Sinatra, even though it was co-founded by a guy named Frank Sinatra Jr.

Takeaway number three, a random Australian guy trademarked the cool ass in 2020, and so far he has been a Robin Hood type figure about it. And then lots of useful numbers this week, especially for theories about where it came from. Those 1973 photos do a lot to rule stuff out. We also covered other names for it, theories that can be debunked about it, the origin of the concept of a meme and culture, and more. about it, the origin of the concept of a meme and culture, and more. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now.

If you support this show at MaximumFun.org, members are the reason this podcast exists. So members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is a bizarre sideways cool ass in a bizarre renaissance painting. Someone painted a sideways cool ass in the 1500s. Visit sifpod.fund for that bonus show, for a library of more than 19 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, for a library of more than 19 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and bonus audio from Black People Love Paramore, and a further catalog of all sorts of other Max Fund bonus shows.

It's special audio, it's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaxMumFun.org. Key sources this week include two people who I want to shout out in particular for doing like internet journalism and detective work about this. One of them is a YouTuber in Sweden. His username is Lemino, L-E-M-M-I-N-O, and he released a YouTube documentary about what he calls the Universal S. That's one of the names for it. He released that in 2019. You can watch that on YouTube. Also, the journalist and podcaster,

Julian Morgan's did a lot of work about this for Vice News, did kind of a series of articles about it. And so both of them really dug up a lot. I hope you check out their stuff. We're also citing further coverage of the Stussy brand, especially from the Los Angeles Times written by Don Lee and also a piece from hypebeast.com about the brand's current ownership and current CEO David Sinatra. And I hope you've seen the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat. We're linking Museum of Modern Art Resources for that. Also the obituary of John Nahr from The Guardian and his book The Faith of Graffiti featuring an essay by Norman Mailer published in 1974. Between our bonus show this weekend, that stuff about Basquiat and John Nahr, there's

a lot of fine art going on because we just did a whole nother fine art episode about Nighthawks and so I'm liking that vibe lately. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wapinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skatigok people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy.

Sequoia taped this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino or Tongva and Keech and Chumash peoples. And I want to acknowledge that in my location, Sequoia's location, and many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode and join the free CIF discord where we're sharing stories and resources about native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join that discord. We're also talking about this episode on the discord, and hey, would you like a tip on

another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 57, which is about the topic of jellyfish, my number one animal phobia, which Katie really helped me through. You're going to love it. You'll hear me sweat and also get through it with my buddy. And by the way, jellyfish can reproduce sexually or asexually. It's up to them. A lot of options. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my cohost Katie

Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken, Un-Shaven by the BUDOS band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra extra special thanks go to our members and thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then.

["The Star-Spangled Banner"] Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.